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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Jack Carlsen, Janne J. Liburd & Deborah Edwards
School/Work Place : Curtin Sustainable Tourism Centre, Australia (Jack Carlsen), University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (Janne Liburd), University of Technology Sydney, Australia (Deborah Edwards)
Contact : j.carlsen@curtin.edu.au
Year : 2010

This paper highlights the importance of new and established networks that underpin the innovation processes in sustainable tourism. It will draw on published literature as well as case studies to describe the various types of networks that have developed as an integral part of the innovation process (Carlsen et al, 2008). Innovation rarely occurs in isolation. Invariably, collaboration between like-minded individuals or agencies is essential in order to transform an idea or opportunity into a reality. In some cases, the links are not always intuitive or apparent and may come about through serendipity rather than strategy. In other cases, the formation of new networks gives rise to further innovation, creating a virtuous circle of process, product or service innovation. Established networks, such as those developed between government, industry and universities, are also a substantial source of innovation through research, knowledge development and dissemination.

True innovation in tourism businesses is nebulous and often driven by external forces such as changing customer needs, demographics, technology, government policy, environmental conditions, social imperatives or the supplier chain. Innovation in tourism can occur at different operational and sectoral levels and apply in a range of geographic locations. It can take the form of product, process, management or institutional innovations (Hjalager, 1996) and may be a disruptive or an incremental process (Schaper and Volery, 2007).

Innovation “remains fundamentally an application of knowledge” (Schaper and Volery 2007:64), which is best achieved through networks that serve as both repositories and generators of innovative ideas and information. There has since been a proliferation of product, process, managerial and institutional innovations that have embraced sustainability and this paper describes and analyses just a few examples of these. Hjalager (1996) indicates that networks are an integral part of the process of innovation, which often involves ‘redefinitions of interrelationships between actors’ (Hjalager, 1996, p. 202), although these relationships may be cooperative or confrontational, both still stimulate innovation (Tremblay, 2002). Hausman (2005) also finds that ‘ideological innovations, such as new management practices’ involve new partnerships as well as new ideas. Laing et al suggest that partnerships provide a means for the diffusion of innovations (Laing et al, forthcoming). Liburd and Hergesell (2007) recognise the importance of training, education and employee retention and succession to improve learning and innovation for sustainable tourism in the European North Sea Region.

People, as customers or operators, are at the core of innovation in tourism. Hence networks are critical and the social and cultural environment has to be supportive of innovative ideas and opportunities if they are to be realized. To shed light on this conversation cross-case analysis (Patton 1990) was applied to eight case studies to compare and contrast the different types and contexts of innovation and for an integrated overview of the network drivers, processes and barriers for innovation.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
294 Think Tank XIII The Paradox of poverty amidst the plenty of nature: co... file 7338 Nov 06, 2013

Rural communities in South Africa have not been active stakeholders in tourism development. Community awareness and involvement in the preservation of natural and cultural heritage through sustainable tourism development in selected areas ad...

Author: Felicité A. Fairer-Wessels 

Year: 2013 

293 Think Tank XIII Assessing the Impact of Rural Tourism Development on t... file 7330 Nov 06, 2013

Past literature has posited that tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors and has been signified as an attractive investment proposition. Rural tourism sector has been actively promoted by the Malaysian government and currently, it is c...

Author: May-Chiun Lo, Vikneswaran Nair, Peter Songan & Helen Lee HuiHui 

Year: 2013 

292 Think Tank XIII Exploring the Relationship between Cultural Capital in... file 7321 Nov 06, 2013

There is substantial literature on the impacts of tourism on culture, both positive and negative, however, there are relatively few articles that explore the relationship between cultural capital and sustainable tourism. This paper will repo...

Author: Laurie Murphy & Andrea Schurmann 

Year: 2013 

291 Think Tank XIV The Development of a National Tourism Research Agenda ... file 7238 Jun 26, 2014

A national research agenda identifies the research priorities that need to be addressed to “inform future policy and service delivery” by government and “for use by academics and practitioners to stimulate research, partnerships and collabor...

Author: Leo Jago & Margaret Deery 

Year: 2014 

290 Think Tank XII A Global Tourism Geography - The Role of Transport file 7212 Nov 06, 2013

After decades of tourism research definitions and statistics of global tourism, flows are still not uniformly defined. A problem is that scholars, sector stakeholders and policy makers tend to have a biased image of the global tourism system...

Author: Paul Peeters & Martin Landré 

Year: 2012 

289 Think Tank IV Environmental Training and Measures at Scandic Hotels,... file 7191 Dec 01, 2013

Hotels are traditionally geared towards providing a high-level of comfort and entertainment, as well as a broad spectrum of services, often without giving much concern to associated environmental or socio-economic impacts. Hotel companies ty...

Author: Paulina Bohdanowicz, Branko Simanic & Ivo Martinac 

Year: 2004 

OPA: 2004 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

288 Think Tank X Sustainable Destination Management and the Marketing-P... file 7151 Oct 14, 2013

A traditional and widely held view is that a sustainable approach to destination planning and management ideally requires that marketing and product development are undertaken in an integrated manner. However, if we take just two activities...

Author: Tazim Jamal & Dianne Dredge 

Year: 2010 

287 Think Tank VI Corporate Social Responsibility and Marine Tourism Org... file 7144 Oct 13, 2013

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an important issue for some governments but the tourism industry appears to be slow in adopting CSR strategies. By focusing on CSR, we argue that the implementation of CSR audits could help t...

Author: Ya-Ting Huang, David Botterill & Eleri Jones 

Year: 2006 

286 Think Tank IX Valuing Open Innovation Environments in Tourism Educat... file 7106 Oct 13, 2013

The world has changed tremendously since the publication of Our Common Future by the World Commission for Environment and Development (1987), which elevated the concept of sustainable development from grassroots initiatives to the forefront...

Author: Janne Liburd & Anne-Mette Hjalager 

Year: 2009 

285 Think Tank V Using Theories of Stigma Management and Impression Man... file 7091 Oct 13, 2013

Researchers have noted that impression management is key to tourism crisis management planning and recovery (Ritchie et al., 2003:201); indeed, some have suggested that “crisis management is as much about dealing with human perceptions about...

Author: Bonalyn Nelson 

Year: 2005 

284 Think Tank XII Opportunities and Obstacles for Sustainable Tourism Mo... file 7046 Nov 06, 2013

Cross border destination management is characterized by some extra challenges: national, district or county interests, different administrative structures, a high impact of politics and policies, inequality of tourism infrastructures, power ...

Author: Tatjana Thimm 

Year: 2012 

283 Think Tank XIII Understanding Sense of Place in Tourism Development: T... file 7022 Nov 06, 2013

This paper introduces the rationale for a study which explores the relationship between sense of place and sustainability at Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park (TARP), Sabah. Sense of place encompasses an understanding of the meaning bestowed ...

Author: Paulin Wong Poh Lin & Balvinder Kaur Kler 

Year: 2013 

282 Think Tank XI Visualising Sustainability: Reflections on Applied Stu... file 7003 Oct 14, 2013

As Sontag (1979) stated, we live in an image-based world within which we are continuously bombarded with visuals in countless formats and guises. However, despite such image saturation, academic engagement whether through teaching or resear...

Author: Caroline Scarles 

Year: 2011 

281 Think Tank XII Creating Tourism Transport Flow Maps with GIS: A Pract... file 6961 Nov 06, 2013

This paper explores various options to visualize tourism transport flows with spatial analysis tools and show them on maps. To facilitate implementation of these options, procedures for data preparation and map creation are explained through...

Author: Martin Landré & Paul Peeters 

Year: 2012 

280 Think Tank IX The elusiveness of sustainability in tourism: The cult... file 6933 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable tourism is perhaps the most prominent feature of contemporary tourism discourse. However, despite its prominence for several decades, achieving sustainability remains as elusive as ever. This paper explores the concept of the cu...

Author: Freya Higgins-Desbiolles 

Year: 2009 

279 Think Tank XIV Can "Slow Travel" Contribute to Sustainable Tourism? file 6925 Jun 27, 2014

Slow travel as a research field has increased in popularity in the last decade. The concept started to gain attention through online communities, and tourism researchers have become interested in the possible benefits that slow travel may ha...

Author: Tina Roenhovde Tiller 

Year: 2014 

» Think Tank X The Importance of Networks for Innovation in Sustainab... file 6923 Oct 14, 2013

This paper highlights the importance of new and established networks that underpin the innovation processes in sustainable tourism. It will draw on published literature as well as case studies to describe the various types of networks that ...

Author: Jack Carlsen, Janne J. Liburd & Deborah Edwards 

Year: 2010 

277 Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 6826 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

276 Think Tank XIII Measuring Tourism: Developing a Regional Level Framewo... file 6782 Nov 06, 2013

In the field of tourism impacts research it is often assumed that certain characteristics of tourism are related to the nature and extent of tourism impacts on the destination’s community well-being. However, a standard set of measures for t...

Author: Elena Konovalov, Laurie Murphy & Gianna Moscardo 

Year: 2013 

275 Think Tank VI Corporate Social Responsibility and Travel & Tourism B... file 6756 Oct 13, 2013

This paper discusses some economic, social, and environmental “hard issues” for the travel and tourism (T&T) industry with the aim of shedding some light on little discussed aspects of industry corporate social responsibility (CSR) with ...

Author: David Stipanuk 

Year: 2006 

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